-Polymorph
“What? The missing person you were looking for, Master Mage, really is Lily, but she’s not actually Lily, she’s Ren? Fine, let’s say the name is one thing. But she’s not a dwarf—she’s a lizard human?”
Yantu asked with a confused expression as he looked at me. He was asking how this was possible, but I had no answer to give him either.
I looked at Ren.
“Yes, that’s right. My real name is Ren. And I’m a lizard human. I’m sorry I deceived you, Elder Yantu.”
We were sitting around the living room of Yantu’s house.
As befitting the home of an equipment expert, it was thoroughly soundproofed, making it a suitable place to discuss secrets.
I kept staring at Ren.
It was silent pressure, telling her to hurry up and reveal the secret of how her outward appearance had changed into that of a dwarf.
“Master Mage, did you perhaps notice it? The trait I possess?”
Ren asked me.
‘Trait?’
At those words, I quietly activated detection magic.
Until now, I had used detection simply to find Ren, but this time I wanted to analyze her constitution.
I activated my golden vision and examined Ren from head to toe.
Sure enough, a unique trait could be sensed in Ren’s constitution. It was an alien constitution unlike any I had ever found in anyone else.
Her constitution flowed like water. Its essence could not be pinned down as one thing, and its waves repeatedly tangled and unraveled.
‘A fluid essence?’
When I looked at Ren in surprise, she quietly nodded and spoke.
“As expected, Master Mage, you figured it out. I have the ability of biological transformation. In other words, the Polymorph trait.”
The first thing that came to mind when I heard Ren’s words was a dragon. As far as I knew, the only creatures with the Polymorph trait were dragons.
But it seemed that was not necessarily the case in this world.
Astonishingly, Ren was neither a dragon nor a mage, and yet she had been born with the Polymorph trait.
Only now did the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Why Vanaheim was looking for her.
“What? Polymorph? So you’re saying you have a trait that lets you freely alter your appearance? Good heavens! I never thought someone with a trait like that really existed!”
Yantu poured out his admiration.
He had learned that Ren was not a dwarf and that she had deceived him all this time, but Yantu did not blame her.
Even after learning that Ren possessed the unique trait called Polymorph, he was only purely amazed; I felt no rejection from him.
Although he had suspected me and locked me in a cell, Yantu did not seem like a bad person. If anything, he seemed warmhearted.
“But with such an incredible ability, why transform into a dwarf of all things? Why not transform into a human? On Earth, wouldn’t it be better to pass yourself off as human? Did you like our neighborhood? Well, dwarves are pretty great, aren’t they?”
Yantu asked with a chuckle. He was indirectly asking what Ren’s circumstances were.
Ren had apparently come into the dwarf district and started living there a week ago.
She had not found a house and fully settled down, only stayed at a hotel, but given the strongly communal nature of the dwarf district, everyone had come to know her.
In particular, Yantu, the village elder, had looked after Ren with special care and made sure she could live comfortably.
“I did like this neighborhood very much. Elder Yantu and all the dwarves treated me kindly, too. But the reason I came here was… as you’ve probably guessed by now, Elder, because I was being chased and had hidden myself.”
Ren spoke with difficulty. She seemed to have a harder time saying this than when she had revealed that she possessed the Polymorph trait.
It was surely because of her fear of those tracking her.
“By Vanaheim?”
Yantu asked point-blank. He asked the very question I should have asked. The answer was already obvious, though.
“Yes. That’s right.”
Upon hearing Ren’s answer, Yantu suddenly turned his gaze to me and scanned my entire body.
He even tried to reach his hand toward me, so I had to smack it away.
“What are you doing?”
“You didn’t come here with some kind of tracking device on you, did you?”
“What are you talking about? I don’t have anything like that. I’m a mage, so why would I carry something like that around?”
“I’m talking about you, Master Mage. You came looking for Lily because you accepted a missing-person tracking request, didn’t you? Wasn’t that request from Vanaheim?”
“It was, but that doesn’t mean I’m on Vanaheim’s side.”
“You’re not? Then what are you? On Lily’s side?”
Yantu stepped forward, wary of me as he protected Ren.
Ren said nothing beside him, but she too was waiting for my answer.
The fact that I had tracked her after accepting Vanaheim’s request could not help but weigh on Ren.
“If the reason Vanaheim is chasing Ren is what I think it is, then I am on Ren’s side. But to know that, I’ll have to hear Ren’s story first.”
I answered while looking at Ren. Ren’s eyes calmly met mine.
“Fine. Let’s say you’re on Lily’s—no, Ren’s side, Master Mage. Then let’s hear Ren’s story together. But wait! I need to go tell them to tighten security around the dwarf district.
Master Mage, you may naively trust Vanaheim, but I don’t. There might have been a tail secretly following you.”
After saying that, Yantu hurried to one side of the living room and called someone. While he did, Ren spoke to me.
“There’s probably no way for me to shake you off and escape from here, Master Mage. But I don’t want to go back to Vanaheim. You already saved me once. I want to believe you’ll save me this time, too.”
Ren’s gaze was desperate. I answered calmly.
“The reason Vanaheim commissioned me for this job is probably because they saw us together last time. It seems they were tracking Ren and found something like CCTV footage.
They’re testing me. They may already see me as one of Ren’s accomplices. So don’t worry. I’m not an employee of Vanaheim, nor am I on their side.”
That was not all.
Earlier, Ren had deliberately risked exposing herself in order to help me while I was being attacked by the dwarves.
I had no reason to drive someone like that into a death trap.
“I see. Because of me, Master Mage, you’ve gotten caught up in something complicated for no reason. Vanaheim is not an easy place to go up against…”
Ren’s expression darkened. What I had said to ease her burden seemed to have made her heart heavier instead.
Just then, Yantu ended his call and returned to us, saying,
“I told them to be thorough with the outer defenses, so don’t worry and talk. Lily—no, Ren. Now that you’ve set foot in our dwarf district, we absolutely won’t let you be dragged out. If Master Mage won’t protect you, we will, so don’t worry.”
“Thank you, Elder Yantu, and you too, Master Mage. Then I’ll trust the two of you and tell you my story.”
At last, Ren opened her mouth about her circumstances. But the very beginning was shocking.
“The truth is, I’m not a pure lizard human.”
“What? Just a moment ago you said you weren’t a dwarf, and now you’re saying you’re not a lizard human either? Then what race are you?”
Yantu asked with an expression that said he was dying of confusion. I was intensely curious as well.
“I’m a hybrid born between a lizard human and a human.”
“A hybrid?”
“Hybrid?”
Yantu and I asked back at the same time.
I was genuinely surprised. I had never heard of hybrids before.
I did not know whether children could be born between biologically different races, nor did I know whether such a thing was socially accepted in this world.
“I see. Ren, I’m sorry for being surprised. I’ve heard that hybrids exist, but I’ve never actually met one…”
Judging by Yantu’s surprise as well, it was clearly not common.
But it had already been more than twenty years since other races immigrated to Earth, so there was no reason such things could not have happened.
However, considering Ren was likely around twenty years old, if she had been born as a hybrid, then I thought it must have happened in the early days of the other races’ migration to Earth.
“It’s all right. It’s understandable that you’d be surprised. Hybrids must be extremely rare. My mother is human, and my father is a lizard human. I was born as the result of a political marriage and reproduction.”
Ren continued her story calmly.
Listening to her, Ren’s background was quite astonishing. Her mother had been a member of a cadet branch of the Thai royal family and the queen of a small island nation.
Decades earlier, a family pushed out of mainland Thailand due to political dynamics had established a small nation on an island, and ever since, they had been watching for an opportunity to regain central power.
Around that time, the migration of other races to Earth began, and Thailand decided to accept lizard humans as immigrants.
The small island nation not only actively accepted their migration onto its land, but also married a lizard human to its princess.
“My mother’s family was trying to strengthen its power by joining hands with another race. My mother, who had been a princess, married my father, a lizard human, and ascended the throne. After that, I was born.”
But regaining central power was not easy.
The royal family on mainland Thailand did not tolerate the small nation that had joined hands with lizard humans, and began imposing harsh sanctions.
The small nation’s economy collapsed, and the people could not even leave the island.
The island nation that had once been a beautiful resort had become a prison in its entirety.
“The people of the family gradually began to regret joining hands with another race. My mother fell into despair, and that despair was directed wholly at my father and me.”
Ren’s mother did not love her husband, who was a lizard human.
She had merely suppressed her feelings and married him because she had no choice, for the sake of her family’s revival.
That was why she did not love Ren either.
Ren was a hybrid, but she had been born in human form.
Like those who had undergone biological transformation surgery, only her fingernails and toenails were green; otherwise, she looked like an ordinary human. But her mother had never once regarded Ren as human.
“I’ve never received my mother’s love. I can’t forget the look in her eyes when I first managed to Polymorph. It was a clear look of disgust.”
Ren had first managed to Polymorph around the age of five. The trait lying dormant within her had finally manifested.
Ren Polymorphed into a lizard human in front of her father. Her father was extremely delighted, but her mother recoiled and became wary.
‘…Filthy thing! Filthy bloodline!’
Although she herself had been the one to give birth to a hybrid, her mother despised her hybrid daughter and considered the trait Ren had been born with ominous.
“In the end, the queen of the small nation sought a new path. She decided to cut ties with the lizard humans. My mother sold my father and me to Vanaheim’s laboratory.”
Ren let out a long sigh.
A sigh escaped from both Yantu and me as we listened to her story.